Chicagoan shapes first lady's hair, keeps mum on details

Friday

Mar 27, 2009 at 12:01 AM

By Avis Thomas-Lester

Johnny Wright met Michelle Obama two years ago, soon after Barack Obama announced his quest for the White House. The hairstylist, then popular in Chicago’s Wicker Park area, was called in for an Essence magazine photo shoot — not that he had to do much with the candidate’s wife’s hair, he says. Wright and Obama quickly hit it off. Fortunately for Wright, the Obamas may have moved from Chicago, but they believe in staying true to their roots. This week, the White House confirmed that Wright has become the first lady’s exclusive First Hairstylist. “It’s exciting, absolutely, doing the first lady’s hair,” Wright says carefully over lemon-drop martinis at a National Harbor restaurant. “She’s a great lady and I feel privileged to do her hair.” Any juicy details, Mr. Wright? Is she natural or does she relax? Does she color? Is that really her hair? Wright turns to comment on the restaurant’s wallpaper color. Being the First Hairstylist requires not only special talent with a blow dryer and flat-iron, but a fierce commitment to discretion. Dozens of hairdressers lobbied for the role. Seemingly anyone who ever had hands in Michelle Obama’s hair gave media interviews about the position. One stylist exploited the frenzy by peddling a product on the Internet that he claimed to have used on Obama. Wright gave interviews when the Obamas were on the campaign trail, but since she became first lady, he has effectively taken a vow of secrecy. During the campaign, Wright, 31, was called in periodically to style Obama for such important events as the Democratic National Convention in Denver, including the day she gave her speech, he says. More recently he was called in for her photo session for the much-noted March cover of Vogue magazine. Since that Essence shoot two years ago, Wright had moved on to the Frederick Fekkai Salon in West Hollywood. In January he was notified that Obama wanted him as her exclusive stylist, he says, and had become her official stylist by the time he coiffed her for the official White House portrait, in which she smiles exquisitely from beneath a perfect modified bob wearing a designer “little black dress” and double strands of pearls. “She did look beautiful, didn’t she?” Wright says rhetorically. He speaks so warmly of her, a listener must ask: Are they friends? He won’t answer directly but offers that they’ve “done lunch.” Clients who have given the OK to talk about them, he says, include actresses Lauren London and Vivica A. Fox, Victoria’s Secret model Selita Ebanks, WNBA star Candace Parker and “Sex and the City” writer Candace Bushnell. Obama is not even Wright’s first first lady. Actress and designer LisaRaye McCoy-Misick, a Chicago native who in 2006 married the president of Turks and Caicos, says that Wright has done her hair for seven years. “Look at him! He’s doing two first ladies!” says McCoy-Misick. “I trust him totally when it comes to my hair and style.” Wright is sorely missed at Frederick Fekkai. Some of his clients still call. “Of course, they loved him because he’s amazing at doing hair, but there is also a sense about him that makes people open up to him,” front-desk manager Felicity Alston says. “They not only love their hair, they love to be around him.” “People tell me everything — they reveal their true secrets to me,” Wright says. “It takes a lot of trust to have that kind of connection and I value that. I will not compromise the trust my clients put in me.” Wright hasn’t left Hollywood behind entirely. He has signed a development deal to create a show with L.A.-based 44 Blue Productions, which has produced such modest reality shows as the Style network’s “Split Ends” and MSNBC’s “Lockup.” This week he reportedly re-signed to promote hair-care products by L’Oreal subsidiary Softsheen-Carson. By age 3 Wright, who has two uncles who are hairdressers, was scratching and oiling his grandmother’s scalp. “She did hair until she was 91,” Wright says of Minnie Brown. “She’s where I got the desire to do hair.” By middle school, he was styling family and friends on the porch of his parents’ house on Chicago’s South Side. “I washed hair in my mom’s kitchen sink,” he says. Eventually his parents, Vernita and Edward, built a basement salon for the youngest of their four sons. Wright shampooed in the utility sink and worked at an old desk his father had fashioned with a mirror. In high school, he used classmate DeKeila Farrell for his first marketing campaign. “She was the most popular girl in school, so I did her hair for free,” Wright says, laughing. He showed off his best work on her: fancy French rolls and finger waves. The cash flowed as other girls came in after school to get the same look. “People would ask: ‘Oooh, girl! Who did your hair?’ ” says DeKeila Farrell-Gill, 32, who lives near Chicago. “He was very good back then, and it’s obvious that he still is.” Wright is forthcoming about the challenges of relocating again. “I wanted someplace professional, but also warm. I wanted my clients to feel at home and comfortable. I didn’t want someplace that was so formal that it seemed, well, stuffy,” Wright says. This month, Wright chose Corte Salon on U Street, in the thick of hip Washington, as his work address — at least, the one that’s not 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

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